I’m very disappointed in the quality and intentions of this article. Shame on you for unfairly comparing an exchange to a service in order to promote your referral link to the very “unsophisticated investors” you were claiming to educate. It’s like comparing an iPad to a Macbook and saying that a Macbook is better for whatever reason, but the reality is they’re completely different items tailored for different use cases.
I agree with Sérgio Azevedo. At initial glance, the article seemed to have the right intentions, even though it has no mention of GDAX. But the referral link at the end of the article left a very sour taste in my mouth, and to be fair, this is an unfair shill for Binance done by comparing apples to oranges. While Binance has advantages such as variety, it does not have every altcoin and other exchanges like HitBTC and Bittrex must be used in some cases, too.
Also, the fact that GDAX was not mentioned was suspicious and the reasoning behind that was revealed with the referral link. I’m disappointed that you are exploiting the same “unsophisticated investors” by keeping a comparison of GDAX from them, and you are using Hackernoon as a vehicle to reach that audience.
One major advantage in trading on GDAX is that transferring coins from Coinbase to GDAX does not have to go through the blockchain and therefore does not incur a blockchain fee, which would be incurred if you transfer to Binance. Then if you want to actually cash out, you have to transfer back to Coinbase, and that incurs another withdraw fee on Binance.
On top of that, you are at the mercy of the blockchain network, which can become very congested and the price you want to cash out at may not be there by the time your coins reach GDAX again.
One can argue the utility of Tether, but with GDAX’s historically inflated prices compared to other exchanges (due to the high activity, low barrier to entry for trading, and convenience of immediate cash-out on there), selling for tether will likely result in a loss compared to selling out on GDAX for cash.
The reality is, transferring out to other exchanges will become a common practice as crypto investors begin to explore cryptos outside of BTC, ETH, LTC, and BCH. But 1) GDAX is a great option if you are looking to only trade within the circle of those primary coins, and 2) even if you are looking to purchase altcoins, be sure to check coinmarketcap.com and see where your altcoin is traded before just blindly sending funds to Binance because someone who’s trying to make a quick referral buck told you to.
